OUT OF THE SKY AND INTO THE DRIZZLE

So, being a good wife, I followed Tama to the Emerald City where she is attending a work related conference for a few days.  A little cogitating showed me that I haven’t been back to Seattle since I moved away 14 years ago, and a couple of days reminded me why.  Okay, like all big cities, there are some things to like.  The trick is to find more of them than things you don’t and that, I think, gets harder the older you become.

Things I like…

I still like the urban skyline, shades of old WPA art prints. And, in spite of any Sunday afternoon filled with throngs of slack-jawed, shuffling Midwesterners, You can’t beat the Pike Street Market for the pure joy of hoofing it thru a place where you can buy fresh anything from cheese to nuts.

I like the effort put into window dressing. Eye catching is important with the fast paced crowd so people throw a little extra at the job.  We passed a clothing store that had maybe a dozen big windows each of them filled with dozens of vintage manual sewing machines… made me stop… ‘course I didn’t buy anything.

I also like the fact that, with so many kinds of restaurants to choose from, there is almost always a second tier of them so you can have “hole-in-the-wall” and not have to hang out in the trendy crowds.

Of course, when you are flying blind, all those choices can also exponentially grow your chances to be disappointed.

Saw some art, most of it very good, and … oops, so much for the things I like about Seattle…

I find that I am no longer amused by all the loony toons wandering the streets, nearly as common as the corner Starbutts.  And while we are at it, why is it that its almost always the street people who jump the light at the cross walk… I mean where, exactly, do they have to be for which they are running late?

I won’t even cover crap like bad urban planning, traffic and swaggering, attitudinal young gangstas.

The conference is over and today the sun finally surfaced so, of course, we are leaving on the choo-choo and on to Portland…